


heART attack

by hobikilledme



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Art Forgery, Con Artists, M/M, Minor Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan, Non-Binary Yoon Jeonghan, Pigment facts, art thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25322410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobikilledme/pseuds/hobikilledme
Summary: Art thieves????
Relationships: Chwe Hansol | Vernon/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47





	heART attack

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you have to write a super self-indulgent fic catered only to you. Also crossing vernon/minghao off my bingo square  
> Title is supposed to be a play on Heart Attack by LOONA  
> No i didn't read over this, please don't say anything about it

It starts when Hansol takes a job being the night shift at the front desk of his dorm. He already wasn’t sleeping, grad school was hard? Who would have thought. He figured he might as well make money while his body refused to sleep.  
Usually he didn’t even pay attention to people who came in and out of the dorm. After 9pm only students could get in with their cards, and the ones who tried to sneak things in usually walked back out as soon as he looked over the top of whatever book his professor had assigned for the week.  
There was one person though. Xu Minghao, they’d had to share some art history pre-reqs and somehow had both ended up living in the same dorm building. Again, Hansol usually had no interest in anybody coming into the dorm but Minghao didn’t do subtle. Walking in and out of the dorm carrying art supplies when Hansol knows for a fact that the art grad students are given full 24 hour studio access starts to seem a little suspicious after a few weeks.  
One night, he calls Minghao out for it.  
“That won’t work you know,” Hansol doesn’t even have to look up from his book to know Minghao is glaring at him.  
“What are you talking about ?” Minghao snipes back at him, and Hansol can see it so clearly in his mind, the hand on one hip splattered with paint, a bucket of paint in the other hand.  
He turns the page of his book, “If you’re trying to fake a Pollock, that paint won’t work.”  
The eye-roll can be heard from his desk, “It’s house paint, what does it matter? That’s what he used.”  
Another page turned, “Sure it doesn’t matter if you want to get caught.”  
The paint bucket gets slammed on to his desk and he finally looks up. Minghao looks angry. “I won’t get caught, I’m the best there is,” He growls through his teeth and Hansol laughs.  
“Doesn’t matter if you’re the best. I’ll tell you something I know. The white Pollock used isn’t sold in a store,” He puts his book down and leans across the desk to get in Minghao’s face, “He used a resin-based alkyd enamel house paint, that shit was toxic enough to give you cancer looking at it. Now if you want to get caught,” He pats the side of the paint can, “You can use this latex filled acrylic stuff and send me a card from jail.” He picks up his book again and turns his chair. Waits for one, two, three seconds. And then,  
“Fine, what do you want?”  
And that’s how Hansol found himself in the middle of an art theft ring. 

\----

The beginning of the story started when Hansol decided to go to college and get a degree. But that’s, not exactly right.  
It started when Xu Minghao walked into a museum for the first time on a class field trip and started crying. But that’s not exactly right either.  
What really started it was Yoon Jeonghan. Jeonghan had a long and illustrious past of stealing things from museums and frankly they were tired of watching the next generation of thieves fuck it up so badly. So they made something close to a school. It seemed sort of like a school because people were taught things there but if you asked too closely, it absolutely didn’t exist.  
One of the things that this “school” offered was forgeries, especially for works that needed to be taken from museums to be returned to their rightful owners/ countries. That’s where people like Minghao and Hansol came in. Experts in their fields, they helped to make sure that not even the most well paid white man at a museum could tell the difference under a microscope of their “new” pieces.

Art thieves as a whole are just plain weird Hansol has found. There’s one person, Woozi, who only steals antique music instruments and it’s only so he can buy new and overpriced midi boards. Another Kim Mingyu, who only does daylight robberies with his boyfriend and doesn’t even sell the pieces! He says he only takes what he loves. There’s another trio, they call themselves booseoksoon? (Hansol thinks they should come up with a cooler name) who exclusively steal” pieces that wealthy western museums took and return them to the various Indigenous cultures and peoples they were taken from. 

\---  
As soon as Hansol graduated, he was offered a formal job in the painting department of Jeonghan’s school. Minghao, who really was the best there was, also worked in the painting department. The “Department” was really just a huge studio for Minghao to work and a big desk with shelves behind it for Hansol. It was homey, at least Minghao filled it with more life than the Chemistry labs had. They worked well together, trading off music over the speakers and bickering gently about the new works that came in to be replaced.  
Hansol always managed to get to the studio first, a curse of one parts insomnia and another part genuine love of work. He liked nothing more than analyzing 18th century pigment readouts to help Minghao make new paints. He usually left Minghao’s coffee on his stool and got to work.  
Minghao would stumble in an hour or two later, carrying some random art supplies before sending Hansol a smile over the coffee and kicking him off the speakers.  
Today, Minghao comes in and out a couple of times before settling down. Hansol watches over the top of his book. Finally he seems to have dragged in the last thing. “Tell me something you know,” Minghao says, dumping a bucket of brushes on the floor by a new canvas. Hansol keeps spinning in his chair, refusing to look up from his book now that he has Minghao’s full attention. “Tryian purple was incredibly expensive and took thousands of snails to produce even a gram of the pigment.”  
Minghao snorts, bending down to start sorting through the mess on the floor, “Everyone knows that, tell me something /you/ know.”  
Hansol stops spinning. “While the West argued and fought wars over incredibly smelly purple, the active ingredient in Tryian purple was ammonium, which they usually got from urine, Indegenious weavers in Central America found that if you simply put the live snail on the undyed wool, it scrawls over it and dyes it purple anyways,” he says in one big breath. Minghao’ is looking at him with that star eyed look that feels like standing in the sun.  
“See? That’s what you know.”  
Hansol was obsessed with that look.

\----  
One of the things that Jeonghan insisted was that everyone working under them at least knew how a theft was pulled off. This usually meant learning from example, so Hansol frequently found himself invited to wealthy museum donor’s dinners to keep eyes on the newbies Jeonghan was training.  
Hansol didn’t do much during these training sessions, usually stood at one of the stupidly tall tables and ate all the appetizers all night. Occasionally he’d text Seungcheol, Jeonghan’s husband, that he’d figured out one of the newbies, and he’d watch as Seungcheol pulled them out of the room.  
Minghao had to tag along to this one because he’d managed to skip out of the last two because of too many paintings coming into their department at a time. Now, Hansol was treated to the fully realized idea that was Minghao in a suit.  
They both ended up standing at one of the stupid tall tables, picking out the newbies left and right. Galas were boring.  
“Tell me something you know,” Hansol says, swirling the champagne in his glass, already tired of rich people. Minghao downs his glass.  
“I know that it takes one part medium to two parts linseed oil to get oil paint to move across a canvas,” he says, already looking for another waiter with the little flutes of champagne.  
Hansol rolls his eyes, handing over his glass to him. “Give me something new, something fresh.”  
Minghao looks down at the bubbles, looking like he’s contemplating something deeper than the drink.  
“If,” He starts, taking a sip, “If you don’t gesso a canvas, the oil in the paint will eat through the material, ruining the whole piece until you have nothing left except a pile of paint.”  
“See?” Hansol says, leaning on the table again and looking over the party, “There’s something you know.”

\---

Hansol walks into the studio one day to see Seungkwan already spinning in his chair. The other boy grins when he sees Hansol. “Just the man I was looking for,” he says sipping from his mostly empty cup, ice cubes rattling.  
“Seungkwan, please don’t get coffee on my stuff,” Hansol sighs, putting down the stack of paperwork Chan had handed him when he’d arrived.  
“I would never,” there are already several papers with coffee stains on them, “Anyways, I need a favor.”  
“What’s up?” Hansol starts to shuffle the coffee paper into its own pile. Seungkwan continues to spin around in his chair.  
“You know Jeff Koons?”  
Hansol wrinkles his nose, “Not off the top of my head, don’t tell me, some white dude who thinks abstract squares are the new thing?”  
Seungkwan sighs, “Even worse, ugly ass sculptures selling for millions.”  
Hansol shakes his head, “Rich people really have no taste,” He waves Seungkwan out of his chair and the other boy just ends up sitting on his desk, knocking over a different pile of papers.  
“Oh absolutely, but regardless of that, Soonyoung has had enough and wants one. The only problem is the one he wants is currently on display in Versailles.”  
Hansol doesn’t like where this is going.  
Seungkwan continues, “I need someone to canvas the place for me, mainly because Soonyoung and Seokmin were both banned for accidentally destroying one of his sculptures in Chicago last year, which can you blame them?”  
“Why are you asking me then?”  
“Because I know you haven’t had a vacation in three years, and I’ll pay for the rest, flight, room and everything.”  
“Okay but how the hell am I gonna just get into restricted sections of Versaille?”  
Seungkwan snaps his fingers and points at him, “You’re going to get in with an invitation to the Festival of Versailles,” He takes a creamy looking envelope out of his bag, “I’ll leave this here. You can bring a plus one if you want! Okay I’ve got to go, love you lots!,” He blows kisses at Hansol as he leaves the studio again.  
Hansol looks at the envelope and thunks his head down on his desk. That’s how Minghao finds him when he walks into the studio an hour later.  
“What’s wrong with you?” He asks, uncovering his palette and setting up the bluetooth speaker.  
Hansol groans. Minghao laughs, “Oh nooo,” He comes over to sit on the edge of the desk, artfully avoiding all of the stacks of paper and pets Hansol’s head. “What’s up?”  
Hansol pats around the desk and holds up the envelope without moving his head. Minghao takes it and opens it carefully. The silence makes Hansol turn his head so he can see the other boy. Minghao’s mouth is open in an “O” and he looks like he isn’t actually seeing the paper.  
“You want to go to France with me?”

\---

France is beautiful. Hansol at least assumes it is, he spends most of his time looking at Minghao in France. That, he can say with confidence, is absolutely astounding. Seungkwan had booked their flights a few days before the Festival, insisting that Hansol actually take it as a vacation instead of just being an accomplice to a crime.  
Minghao loves the idea of sightseeing, has maps already circled with places to see when they get to their hotel room. He lays them all out on the bed to see the whole city under his hands, paper crinkling against the soft sheets. Hansol leans against the balcony railing, watching the sun bathe the other boy in the softest yellow. Minghao had insisted on throwing open all the windows in their room, and the curtains fluttered softly, filtering the sound of the street below.  
“Where are we going first Hao?” Hansol says, watching him grin softly down at the maps.  
“Let's get lost,” Minghao packs up the maps and grabs his bag.

They buy fruit from a small stand and a loaf of bread from the bakery under their hotel. They shove it in Hansol’s backpack and wander across the city. They stop across from the louvre. Hansol watches Minghao tap his fingers on the side of his camera, as if he’s trying to decide if he wants to take a picture or not.  
“Go stand in front of it for me,” He eventually says, waving Hansol towards the glass pyramid. Hansol isn’t sure if he’s supposed to smile or not as he watches Minghao crouch almost to the ground to take a picture. So he just tilts his head at the other boy.  
“Tell me something you know,” Minghao says, dusting off his pants and turning to walk away from the museum. Hansol takes a bit to think about it. They wander through a couple streets, peering into little shops here and there.  
“I actually really dislike the idea of museums, at least in a western context.”  
Minghao bumps his shoulder to get him to explain more. He likes that about Minghao. The not letting him sit in his own head, the refusal to take him at face value, always asking for more.  
“On one hand, museums offer people the opportunity to see and fall in love with art that they might have never seen before but sometimes that art isn’t theirs, you know? Why do we continue to allow museums to hoard sacred objects that weren’t theirs to begin with? It’s sort of fucked up.”  
Minghao hums, looking over a stall selling beeswax candles outside of a cathedral. “Isn’t that what we’re trying to stop?” He says softly, brushing gentle fingers over a lavender candle, “It’s almost like we’re heros if you think about it.”  
Hansol shrugs, “My mom probably wouldn’t agree with you on that one.”  
Minghao laughs, the high sharp laugh he does that almost sounds like he’s saying ha ha ha out loud. He grabs Hansol’s hand tto drag him to the next booth, leaving the scent of lavender on his wrist.

\---

They end up at a museum regardless. It’s hard to avoid them if you love art. The Musée national Gustave Moreau is a museum made out of an artists house and it’s absolutely stuffed with art.  
“Tell me something you know,” Hansol says, voice muffled in the crowded room.  
Minghaos fingers tap a pattern on his wrist as he stares up at the paintings above their heads.  
“When an artist dies, part of the art dies with them,” the hand on his wrist holds tight as if Hansol is all that’s stopping Minghao from reaching out and touching the long sweeping brush strokes on the canvas. “When an artist dies, the art has to continue on its own, it no longer has a true defense. It lives or dies on its own.” 

They wander up a spiral staircase and find the artists studio. Minghao looks entranced, staring at the broken stubs of pastels littered on the desk and the brushes caked in paint long since dried. Hansol is entranced by Minghao. The air swirls with dust and Minghao tugs on Hansol’s wrist. “Tell me something you know,” he says, wandering over to the other side of the room to look at the half finished drawings.  
Hansol finally looks away, staring at the palette pockmarked with faded colors, unwashed and unused. “Yves Klein “Created” a blue,” he makes air quotes, “It’s called IKB. It was created here in Paris actually. It was one of the first new pigments of the 60s. Klein was kind of weird.” He trails off, watching Minghao look in awe at the paintings on the wall. He watches Minghao stare and then turn his head, wiping away tears.  
“Hey, you okay?”  
“Yeah, I just got overwhelmed, have you ever thought about how much love is put into art? The adoration that’s put behind every brush stroke? It’s a lot.”

\---

Seungkwan emailed him the train tickets the day of the festival. Hansol feels relatively put together, Seungkwan picked out his outfit and texted him a little kissy emoji. The patterned shirt and purple velvet jacket make him feel a little more grounded, the colors comforting. Minghao walks out of their bathroom, “Hansol, will you help me with these cufflinks?” he asks and Hansol’s breath catches. It looks like the sun that had shone on Minghao for the past few days had woven itself into his shirt, gold threads glinting off the black.  
“Yeah no problem,” He says, desperate for a reason to not stare at the makeup smudged around Minghao’s eyes, the red pressed onto his lips. “We need to head out soon.”  
Minghao grins, “Off to the palace then!”

Parties at Versailles are massive. Lights and people and music as far as they both can see. People in victorian dresses, some people in almost nothing, but most in between. Hansol feels like this is what being inside a firecracker would be like, colors and light everywhere.  
The actual canvasing doesn’t take that long. Minghao pretends to be overly drunk, whispering the location of all the camera’s located in the room, into Hansol’s ear. He types it out and sends it to Seungkwan, including the number of guards and exits available in the room.  
After they’ve stumbled back out into the crowd, Minghao has to press incredibly close to him to avoid the crush of the crowd. “Drinks?” He mouths, and Hansol nods.  
One drink turns into three turns into Minghao dragging him out of the bar to dance. Hansol feels more drunk than he should be, too many things happening at once for him to focus on anything. Almost. There’s always Minghao, Minghao holding his hand, Minghao pulling him close, closer than maybe strictly platonic friends would dance together, Minghao staring at him with wide star filled eyes.  
Hansol blinks and he’s being dragged out of the crowd. Minghao pulls him into a bathroom, locking the door behind them, cutting off the noise. “Hey you okay?” Minghao cups the side of his face. Hansol shakes his head a little, trying to ground himself.  
“Yeah, just got a little spacey sorry about that.”  
“It’s okay, just wanted to make sure you were alright,” his hand doesn’t move, and Hansol can’t tell if it’s more grounding or not.  
“Minghao,” He starts, stops, licks his lips to try and think. He watches Minghao’s eyes track the movement, the other boy looks hungry. “Minghao, is it okay if I kiss you?” He says.  
“Oh thank god,” Minghao breathes out, half against Hansol’s mouth as he presses their mouths together. It’s awkward at first and then Hansol tips his head and Then.  
It feels like fire has been poured into his veins, he feel frantic, needs to touch Minghao, needs to kiss him, needs to let him know the depth of emotion he’s feeling. It seems the same is true of the other boy too.  
“Tell me something you know,” Mingaho says, biting at his neck and crowding him up against the counter.  
Hansol put his hands back, trying to brace himself. “Egyptian blue and Han purple are only two silicon molecules apart from each other,” He manages to say, stretching his neck to the side as Minghao continues to leave marks up the side.  
“Tell me more,” Minghao says, one hand already trying to untuck Hansol’s shirt.  
“Hao we are in public and -” He gets cut off with another kiss from Minghao. It’s frustrating that his knees are already weak from just kissing. But it’s not /just/ Minghao. It’s Minghao who cries at paintings, who always leaves the studio lights on, who always buys extra when he buys food just so he can share.  
“Tell me please Sollie,” Minghao says against his lips, long fingers trailing up his ribcage and leaving goosebumps in their wake.  
He curls one hand into the soft hair on Minghao’s neck, holding him still enough to kiss him deeply.  
“When you magnetize Han purple,” he kisses a trail down Minghao’s neck in retaliation, both hands coming to unbutton the other boys shirt enough that he can get to his collarbones to leave bright purple spots, “It loses its three dimensional form, Hao, please.” He begs when Minghao palms the front of his pants.  
“Are you sure you want this first time to be in a public bathroom,” Minghao’s sarcasm doesn’t hide the fact his voice sounds wrecked.  
“It's Versaillies, it’s at least a little romantic,” Hansol laughs, but pulls back all the same, “Actually you’re right, lets go so you can fuck me on our ridiculously high thread count hotel bed.” He starts buttoning Minghao’s shirt again while the other boy dissolves into laughter. 

\----  
Later,  
“Tell me something you know,” Hansol whispers, playing with Minghao’s hair, soft and fluffy after showering. Minghao hums from where he has his face buried in Hansol’s shoulder.  
“The most frightening part of a painting is both the blank canvas and the last stroke,” Minghao says tracing loops on one of Hansol’s arms. “The first part is the fear that comes with the unknown. The second,” he pushes up on to his elbows so he’s looking down at Hansol. The hand in his hair comes down to cup his jaw, “the second comes from the fear of messing up the already known.”  
Hansol leans up to kiss him. “There’s no mess here, no mistakes. Trust me, it’s something I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so all the pigment facts are true except for the Han Purple and Egyptian Blue fact. Originally Han Purple was only two silicon molecules away from Egyptian Blue but modern recipes require the use of Barium to make the purple! Just so you know! Also Hansol was stressed he wasn't thinking right
> 
> [If you want anymore pigment facts, find me here](https://twitter.com/hobikilledme)


End file.
